Wales new boy Jac Morgan relishing prospect of taking on England
The Ospreys flanker almost gave up the idea of playing professional rugby in 2019
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Your support makes all the difference.New Wales flanker Jac Morgan admits playing at Twickenham next week would be special given the historic rugby rivalry between England and Wales.
Morgan won his first cap on Saturday as reigning Six Nations champions Wales bounced back from a Dublin drubbing against Ireland to beat Scotland 20-17 in Cardiff.
The Welsh-speaking Ospreys openside says he was so nervous before kick-off that he almost forgot the words of the national anthem ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’.
“It’s always a dream to play for your country from a young age,” said 22-year-old Morgan. “Growing up England is one of the biggest games with the rivalry between the two countries over the years.
“Everybody knows how big the game is with the history between the two sides.
“It was amazing to win my first cap and have all my family there in the Principality Stadium. It was a great honour and to top it off with a win was brilliant.
“There was loads of emotion with the anthem and the nerves were terrible. I’m a Welsh speaker but I nearly forgot the words halfway through with everyone being so loud!
“But I saw my mother in the stand as she was in the front and that helped me cool down a little bit.”
Morgan produced an impressive debut display as Wales revived their Six Nations title hopes before heading to England on February 26.
Wales, however, have not won at Twickenham in the Six Nations Championship since 2012, with England enjoying four successive victories.
Morgan said: “The boys were disappointed after the first game but plenty of work has gone on and it was a good win against Scotland.
“There’s still a lot of work for us and we’re excited to see how it goes next week. We reviewed the Ireland game and a lot of the boys have been in plenty of camps before.
“There’s a lot of leaders in the team and we knew the improvements we had to make.”
Morgan led Wales during an age-grade Six Nations Championship and played at the Under-20 World Cup in Argentina in June 2019.
But he almost gave up on the ambition becoming a professional player later that year as he found it difficult to combine academy rugby with an engineering apprenticeship.
He said: “I was working more in the afternoons and the evenings and it was quite hard.
“There were a few training camps in the October after the World Cup in Argentina, and I was weighing up whether I could do it again.
“But I decided to give the Under-20s another shot.”
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